


baby are you lonesome now?

by orphan_account



Category: The Runaways (2010)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Use, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:18:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She says she wants her life back, and you didn’t even have one to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	baby are you lonesome now?

She says she wants her life back, and you swallow, dry and harsh over your complaints, and you wait for her to be gone before you start crying.

When you do, you go all out: the tears and the loud, loud sobs, and borderline cracking your skull open on the dirty walls, banging your head over and over again inside the motel room. Swearing when you crack a nail, and two, clawing at your skin first bare- and open-handed and second with a knife. Sticking the needle deep into your arm and sliding into merciful oblivion.

She says she wants her life back, and you didn’t even have one to begin with.

.

You two never got a chance.

All you ever had was the backrooms and the fingers bending inside and outside and the kisses that tasted like drugs. All you ever had were those songs, and trying so hard to be provocative you ended up broken, kneeling, you ended up here alone.

All you ever had was sleeping on each other’s shoulders, crammed in the back of a car, rushing across the states for yet another show, yet another screaming and singing for these lurid men that never once took you seriously.

You were too early, or you were too late, but truth is you never even got to meet each other halfway.

You’re grateful when you learn she did not die.

.

Your band never got a chance.

All you ever had was the dirty eyes of a crowd that never cared for your music so much as for your looks, and that never could sing along but had mastered the art of imagining you naked.

You tell yourself you have control over them when you make them kneel on the floor and you fuck them, hard and unloving as you can, bare and tearing the skin as you know how to, but they smirk under the blood and the tears and deep down you know they’re only taking what they want, and none of you is doing nothing than giving what they ask and complying when they tell you: you dirty, worthless girls, all you have is high and stoned and fucking into me like you will die trying.

When they tell you: all you have will never be music.

When they tell you: all you have will never be your life.

When they tell you: all you have will never last.

.

You listen to what they tell you, and year in year out your band is a joke rushing across the streets of America. You still sing on the stage and you still strum the chords but it's only so as to pretend you are anything more, anything other than prostitutes.

You sleep with countless men, countless pigs hoping to god they get to be young again, and pretending they are young again when they fuck you, because why else would you let them fuck you?

There is never a moment when you feel alive other than when you are riding them and screaming like you enjoy it, and you know they will never hate you as much as you hate them, and deep down you know they will never hate you as much as you hate yourself.

And you listen, when they tell you: you’re too young,

And you listen, when they tell you: girls shouldn’t do this,

And you listen, when they tell you: you should be grateful someone wants you,

And you believe them, and you believe them, and you believe them.

.

In the end it turns out Cherie got out better than you did.

She’s working now, and sober, and if someone out there deemed her strong enough to go back into the real world, to go out and work and talk to people and be again a member of society, you can only believe she always was doing better than you are.

That morning on the radio, you want to ask her how she did it, you want her to spell it out for you: her secret to piecing yourself together again, her secret to stitching yourself up and leave out the patches that scream WORTHLESS and SUCH A WASTE and NEVER WILL YOU SUCCEED.

You don’t ask her because you’re afraid she will tell you there is no secret.

You don’t ask her because you’re afraid she will tell you those patches tell the truth.

You don’t ask her because you’re on air and by contract you can’t talk of these things and you don’t ask her because you miss her and you don’t want her back anyway.

You never talk to her again after that.

.

You lay at night in the king sized bed you earned yourself and you make up a lie of how it could have should have been: Cherie Curie and The Blackhearts (it begins).

Joan Jett sitting alone at a bar (it begins), all dressed up and dolled up and looking way too pretty to dance, honest to god jailbait in this godforsaken town, and Cherie Curie the grown up walking up to her and asking if she wants to be in a band.

Waltzing across each other on a stage, and never touching any drugs because you know things like these can only end badly (you’ve seen Cherie’s dad spending the night drunk as hell inside an automobile and afterwards swearing he isn’t a drunk and he doesn’t need the bottle).

You succeed.

.

Up until the day you die you are in love with Cherie Curie, the idea and the bad, real, wild girl and everything that’s important for you in this world.

Up until the day you die you are in love with Cherie Curie and when you say you love music what you really mean is you love the Runaways and the memories of that time –both good and bad– and the memories of Cherie, no matter how broken and hopeless you two were, and no matter you were never destined to have a future you are in love with her nonetheless.


End file.
